PDF to Excel

The table arrived, the total did not

The rows are in the right place, the columns line up, and the sum shows zero. The conversion was fine; the number format was not.

Try a statementIt comes back as a sheet

Polish documents write 1 234,56 — a space for thousands and a comma for decimals. A spreadsheet set to a different locale reads that as a string of characters rather than a number, and a string cannot be added up.

How to see it in a second

Look at the alignment. Numbers sit against the right edge of the cell, text against the left. A column of values aligned left is a column of text.

What to do about it

Set the sheet's separators first

Before converting anything, check what the spreadsheet expects as the decimal separator. Half the cases end there.

Replace, then convert the column

A space to nothing and a comma to a dot, or the other way round, depending on the sheet. Two find-and-replace passes on one column.

Watch the minus sign

Negative amounts in Polish statements sometimes appear in brackets. Those become text too, and the bracket is easy to miss in a long column.